Psychological safety is a feeling shared among team members that it’s okay to admit mistakes, share concerns, and ask questions. Teams that achieve psychological safety are more productive, more creative, and better able to resolve conflict than those that don’t.
What is psychological safety?
Psychological safety refers to an environment where it’s okay to take risks, make mistakes, and where it’s accepted that people will voice differing opinions and ask difficult questions. It’s an important part of a healthy workplace, with benefits for organizations as well as employees.
The term psychological safety was coined by Amy Edmondson, a professor at the Harvard Business School and author of The Fearless Organization: Creating Psychological Safety in the Workplace for Learning, Innovation, and Growth. She developed the concept while studying teams of medical professionals for her Ph.D.
At first, Edmondson thought that the highest performing teams would be the ones reporting the fewest mistakes during their shifts, but she found the opposite. The teams that achieved the best outcomes reported a higher number of mistakes per shift than their lower performing peers.
She later realized that the high performing teams were more willing to admit mistakes – and learn from them – than the other teams. From that insight came a concept she called “team psychological safety,” which can help anyone who works with a team.
This article will discuss the basics of psychological safety and how to improve that quality in any team.
Make it safe for people to speak up in the workplace
Psychological safety has been called “the belief that one can express themselves freely without fear of negative consequences” in a Penn State University article. Amy Edmondson calls it “felt permission for candor.” However described, the level of psychological safety in any team has major impacts on productivity, innovation, conflict resolution, and more.
For example, Google’s Project Aristotle, a large, multi-year study of team dynamics and team building, found psychological safety to be the single most important factor in creating high performing teams.
The Google researchers began with the idea that the best teams would emerge naturally by putting the brightest high achievers together and turning them loose. But that wasn’t the case. They concluded that who is on a team matters much less than how the team members interact. According to the authors:
Our researchers found that the best teams created a climate of openness where team members admit to their errors and discuss them more often. In other words, they exhibited high levels of psychological safety[.]
Psychologically safe teams accelerate learning and innovation by acknowledging mistakes and exploring new ideas. And not only are they more adaptable, they can also impact the bottom line.
The study found that teams with high levels of psychological safety exceeded their sales targets by 17%, while teams with low levels of psychological safety missed their sales targets by 19%. According to Google, psychological safety was a much better predictor of team success than the number of top performers or the general intelligence of team members.
Developing psychological safety
Psychological safety is a team characteristic. It emerges from interactions among team members over time. Edmondson states, “This is a group level phenomenon – it shapes the learning of the group and in turn affects team performance and therefore organizational performance.” Team members who collaborate closely feel similar levels of psychological safety, according to the Harvard Business Review.
Building psychological safety is “more magic than science,” according to Edmondson, but there are simple steps any organization can take to improve teamwork.
Ensure good management. The first step to increasing psychological safety is the most basic: Establish good management practices, which include setting clear expectations and norms of behavior, ensuring fairness and equal treatment, encouraging open communication, and making sure people feel valued and supported.
Admit mistakes. Psychological safety begins when people are willing to admit their mistakes and learn from them. Leaders must be in the forefront of the effort by admitting their own mistakes, struggles, and challenges. In short, leaders need to become willing to appear vulnerable and less than perfect in the eyes of the people they lead. If they are not, the foundation for psychological safety will be missing.
Actively solicit input. Leaders need to do more than encourage team members to speak out, they should set the expectation that everyone on the team will share their ideas, opinions, and concerns. Some will naturally be more vocal than others, but creating a safe space to share ideas without being judged or criticized is key to developing psychological safety. It may feel awkward at first, but it will become easier with practice. As a bonus, regularly asking team members to express their concerns can help defuse workplace tensions and promote healthy conflict resolution.
In the words of Stanford professor and psychologist Robert Sutton, “When people talk about their own mistakes, rather than pointing out others’ missteps, that suggests your workplace is psychologically safe.” Rather than wasting time and energy blaming and shaming, psychological safety lets teams focus on learning and problem solving in a healthy learning environment, which is the key to unlocking resilience, creativity, and innovation.
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Rachel Burr is an executive and leadership coach with over 20 years of experience working with CEOs and the C-suite across all industries, in organizations of from 200 to 10,000 employees. Rachel holds dual master’s degrees in Organization Development and Clinical Psychology, and numerous certifications in the field of executive coaching. Rachel is a “people expert” who works with clients to unleash their leadership potential. If you would like to learn more about psychological safety and how it can improve teamwork, please contact us.